Season's Greetings to You

To start the season, I want to pass along a holiday message to all of you......

To see other greetings from the Master Forgers, check today's Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November Challenge #3: Sharing a Tradition

Today's challenge for the Counterfeit Kit is to do a project that includes a tradition.

Since I'm working on my December Daily, all my work is for events and thoughts that are yet to happen.  So I decided to pre-make a page for a tradition I'm sure to document, so I can just add pictures later.

This page will be a place to put pictures of our Christmas trees.  I love to decorate, so it's pretty safe to say that we'll have trees. I usually put up two big ones and then a bunch of smaller trees throughout the house. I've scaled back over the past couple of years since Junior was a puppy, but last year he proved to be 100% not interested in the test tree, so I know for sure that the tree tradition will continue.

I'll use these two pages for one day in my book.  I'll use one 8 1/2 x 6 page and one 2-up page for each day.

I used several pieces from Basic Grey Aspen Frost and cut them with a Fiskars tree border punch. Then I layered the cuts and added some Stickles to make them sparkle. The letters on the title sticker are from one of the BG Serendipity and Shine lines and were the perfect color.

The red block is for a tree picture. I punched a tree border across the top to match the rest of the page.

I didn't do much for the second page, so it can be flexible depending on the pictures I get.  I did lightly tack on a couple of my faux wood veneers, and I'm glad I decided to keep them flat. It will help to keep the bulk of the book down a bit. I want to have something blue and a reindeer on each spread, so this cut was my reindeer choice for these pages.

I'm excited for the month of December to get started, so I can start picturing how my book will come together.  To be honest, I probably won't do a lot of it as I go along, because I have so many other things I want to accomplish before the end of the year.  But I'll try to keep good notes and take lots of pictures, and then it will all come together in early 2013 - at least that's what we all hope for our projects, right?!

There's still time to add your own challenge and kit submissions to the November Mr. Linky.  Add your links so we can all take a look and get some inspiration!  And watch the Counterfeit Kit blog next month - I can't spill the beans about what December holds, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. 

A Fun Surprise

A couple of weeks ago, I exchanged messages with someone on 2Peas, and then last week this happened.

It was such a great surprise, and I am adding all these items to my December Daily kit. 

I plan to add this exchange one day in my December Daily, too - it's just the kind of nice moment I'd like to remember about the season.

December Daily Progress

Hi Everyone -

While I haven't been posting much this month, I have done some work for my December Daily project.  I thought I'd take a few pictures to show some of the progress.

I got my binder and started punching new holes in all the pages I plan to use.

I love this binder because of the big d-rings. Lots of room for a month of pages.

My pages will be 8 1/2 x 6, using 12x6 page protectors cut down to size. I cut page bases from the Frosty Cabin stack. The facing page will be a 2- 4x6 pocket page. I've pre-cut some 4x6 pieces for journaling, pictures or decorating; If I get really lazy, I can just print 4x6 photos and slide them right into the protector.  I found these 3-up protectors at Target on clearance for $1/pack. I just cut off the top slot so they would fit.

My inspiration collection includes some really cool page inserts.  I decided to cut my Webster's Pages paper to that insert-size, rather than making them page bases.  I'll use those pieces as needed in the book, too.

 

The binder comes with these plastic envelopes.  Instead of buying inserts, I just covered the plastic with more Frosty Cabin papers.  These inserts are handy for holding cards and other ephemera, and I'll place them where they're needed throughout the book.

Another plastic envelope.  I can also use the outside of each folder as an extra page for pictures, journaling or decorating, depending on what I need.

I have pre-made a couple of base pages, too, but I'm not worried about doing many more.  I'll put them together as my daily events and thoughts come together.  I'll post one of those pages later this week when we post some challenge work. 

Until then, enjoy your family time and turkey hangovers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who are celebrating today!

I'm trying to get back to the land of the living after a no good, dirty rotten cold took me down this month. But I've turned a corner and feel much better this week, just in time for a long weekend to catch up on kit projects and other fun stuff.

Speaking of projects, many of you probably spent the day putting together big feasts. Not knowing how I was going to feel, and since it was just the two of us, I arranged our fancy feast from Cracker Barrel. Clean up was a breeze!

So with all my extra time I decided to start a different sort of project and tackle my scrap space. I had a lot of work to do to get it ready for a productive weekend. While it doesn't look as delicious as all the turkeys I've seen on Facebook today, I am still pretty proud of my own Thanksgiving Miracle:

November Kit - Wood Veneers

Just a quick post today to show you how I did some counterfeited wood veneer shapes.

I first did some veneer counterfeiting back in my July kit.  Today I just wanted to give you a link to a source for the veneer paper I used in this month's kit.

The Real Wood sheets are from Creative Imaginations.  Just do an internet search, and it looks like you can find different pieces from different retailers.  I got lucky and found my birch sheet on clearance at Michaels for $1 earlier this summer.

For your cutting reference, I used a Cricut to cut this month's shapes, and it worked really well.  I set the pressure to Max, speed to Max, and had the blade depth set to 5.  I used just one cut.  At first I worried because you can barely see the cut on the wood, and I thought it wasn't working.  But no worries - most places popped right out.  The exception was long passes that went against the grain.  I used a craft knife along the cut line to help pop those cuts off the page.  I was really happy with the cuts I made.

The sheets work really well with punches and hand cutting, too.

Just wanted to pass along this great item.  The packaged veneer shapes are very nice, but this veneer paper gives you the chance to make a custom shape and to cut only the quantity you want for any one shape. Cut 2 or 3 more copies of the same image, and you can stack and adhere the layers to make a faux chipboard with a veneer top.

I call it a good counterfeit!

November Counterfeit Kit

Well, today's Counterfeit Kit proved to be more difficult that I first imagined, but I'm so happy with the results!

When we first got the news about this month's kit challenge, to counterfeit a current collection, I immediately decided to pick a holiday collection and use my kit for my December Daily pages. But I didn't realize how hard it would be to pick a collection and decide how to use it.

Last year I used all one collection for my DD.  I liked that method, but I knew I wanted to try a more mixed style this year.  So as new collections were released over the past couple of months,  I bought pieces I like from all sorts of collections, thinking, "it will all come together in the end."

And that time has come.  I decided to pull it all together and figure out a way to move from "random and hodge-podge" to "eclectic," and I decided to use Studio Calico Wonderland as my inspiration.  It was one collection I hadn't purchased any pieces (although I wanted to), so I thought it would be a good, neutral place to start.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm just providing this one picture of the inspiration collection.  To see all the pieces, click here for the stock of these items at 2Peas, or here to see the stock at Studio Calico.

Each month Bethany posts a list of ways you might interpret the counterfeiting challenge.  This month I went with the second method on the list:

"Use the "kit contents" as inspiration, and recreate your own kit with the same types of supplies, but in a different color or style that corresponds better with your preferences/photographs/scrapbook style/tastes."  

I hope that by counterfeiting these embellishments with all the different collections of papers, I will be able to tie them all together within this one project.

I needed this push to actually start cutting into all these papers. Otherwise I think I would have been stalled in the these-papers-are-too-pretty-to-use phase and may never have gotten my album off the ground!  It's a random group of papers, isn't it?

The SC collection uses trees, houses and snowflakes throughout the range. I did the same and added reindeer. My goal is to place a reindeer somewhere on each page of my book. Pictured here are all the little bits and baubles I could find in my stash that feature those four items.

The collection's sheet of hexagon stickers is great, but I don't have a hexagon punch or easy way to duplicate a lot of hex's at once. But what I do have is an elongated octagon - the perk of working in "Block O" country, we have a custom Block O Ellison die. So I kept cutting and went crazy punching octagons! Now I have that shape, plus the outer "O" to use as a frame. I kept some of the negative shapes in case they come in handy for journaling blocks or photo frames, too.

Veneers - I love these little wooden shapes! I decided to make a few of my own, using the wood veneer paper I used in my July kit. I had about 3/4 of a sheet remaining, and I never got around to using it in the Cricut at that time, so I decided it was a good time to experiment. I cut extras copies in regular cardstock so I can turn the veneer into faux-chipboard, but I've left them alone for now.  I love my reindeer wood frame, too!

I made my own flair! Until recently I didn't know that we have a button maker in our office, and it's just .10 to make a button. I just left out the pin on the back, and now I have oodles of flair in designs from several collections' papers.

I'm not a big stamper, but since SC is known for its stamps, I thought I should at least throw in a few stamps for this kit. So I pulled everything I could find in my stash that had trees, houses, etc. And I don't have a good alpha set like the SC collection, but I do have this monogram set and thought it might be useful, even just for the numbers.

Later this week I'll show more details on my individual pieces, along with a couple of additional counterfeits - some album inserts and more ephemera based on the Wonderland collection.  Then I'll get busy making a few base pages for the book.  Like last year, my goal is to have my book all set up and ready for pictures by Thanksgiving, so I'll be busy for the next couple of weekends.

Alright, that's it for me. Now click through to Susanne's blog to see her inspiring kit!  And here's the full Master Forger Hop order, in case you need some direction along the way:

Start: Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com

Guest Designer: Julie http://hisglorygirl.blogspot.com/

Crystalhttp://crystalscraftycreations.blogspot.com/

Jemma http://just-jimjams.blogspot.com/

Lisa http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com/

Libeeti http://creationswithlove-li-bee-ti.blogspot.com/

Margie http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com/

Milissa http://millermall.blogspot.com/

YOU ARE HERE:  Rebecca http://howiburb.blogspot.com/

NEXT STOP:  Susanne http://www.snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com/

Bethany http://inspiredscrapper-bethany.blogspot.com/